Lebanon Denial, terror and bravado as Beirut residents await next attack

For months, the staff at Rafik Hariri University hospital had been preparing for the worst. Nurses ran drills in parking garages, practising how to transfer patients from hospitals to the bomb-proof concrete structures.

- William Christou

A building was left empty on the hospital campus so that if mass bombing occurred, medics could bring their families in and not worry about their safety.

On Friday night, the drills seemed to pay off. Dozens of bombs were dropped on Dahieh, the southern suburbs of Beirut, sending residents running to the safest place they could think of: the nearby hospital.

People ran to the gates of Rafik Hariri hospital, asking to stay in the parking lot until the bombing ceased. Staff could not let them in because they had to keep the way clear for incoming wounded and were expecting hundreds of casualties from the airstrikes, which killed the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, and levelled a city block. The residents settled for waiting outside the hospital gates, staying as close to the structure as possible until the Israeli bombing of Dahieh slowed in the morning.

Once the displaced left, the wounded came in. Hospitals in Dahieh started to transfer patients to Rafik Hariri and other surrounding medical centres after the Ministry of Health ordered the evacuation of all hospitals in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Contrary to expectations, the wounded from Friday's strike on Dahieh came at a trickle, the Ministry of Health reporting 11 dead and 108 wounded in its latest update. The deep craters where six buildings used to stand, a result of the powerful bunker bombs Israel had dropped, made search and rescue difficult.

Lebanon's first responders, who had grown used to sifting through rubble over the past 12 months of fighting, found themselves combing through destruction the likes of which they had never seen before. Two days after the strike, the death toll continued to climb.